Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Useless Generation

What is the point of my generation? Really?

How quickly have we abandoned any dream of a revolution? Any notion that maybe we could forge some kind of brave new world for ourselves? How truly pathetic and apathetic are we?

We're content to work the longest hours in Europe, while we get the fewest public holidays in Europe. We just sit back and lap up crap like Big Brother, venting outrage about pointless stage managed so-called "reality TV" rather than getting off our rears and actually doing something to affect change. We've become completely blind to the real issues that are faced by our society - unacceptable levels of child poverty, escalating levels of general ignorance and apathetic acceptance of our elected representatives sanctioning illegal war on the grounds of fictitious military intelligence.

Any previous generation would have taken to the streets, would have been up in arms....we're too busy sharing videos of people falling over on YouTube to really care.

What are we going to be remembered for? YouTube? MySpace? PlayStation? iPod? Useless ephemera.
We are a decadent, fat, lazy generation. The kind of generation that brings about the end of empires.

We've accepted that the world is crap and there's nothing we as individuals can do about it because the state and big corporations are too powerful. But ordinary people have changed things in the past, and they can do so again.

We're one of the richest generations to have lived. So why are we all working ourselves to death? Why are we so stressed? Why can't we relax? Why do we pump ourselves full of stimulants - coke, coffee, red bull - in order to squeeze every last possible productive moment from our lives?

I'm tired of meaningless, pointless crap. I'm tired of working for a paycheck and nothing else. I'm tired of having to care about the relationships of over-privileged rich people I will never meet. I want to do something worthwhile. I have something to say and dammit I want to be heard.

I guess, ultimately, the whole point of this is to explain why it is I'm willing to go out on a limb with my good friend Peter Rogers and start up a publishing venture against all sense. You can't make money in comics. I know this, if I hear it one more time I'll scream. I have something to say, and my music was taken away, so I can't say it that way, the only way I can say it is through comics.

So, over the coming months, we'll be releasing some comics. Take a moment, pick them up, sit back and read them. Yeah, sure, on the surface Young Gods is just a rehash of the X-Men and Slam Ridley, that's just Star Wars, right? Maybe...maybe not... Have a read, you might just be surprised.

Now, repeat after me...

Monday, April 02, 2007

Absurdly Busy!

Where to start? Well, firstly, perhaps, an apology for not updating in so long, but there's just so much going on.

On the colouring front, busy with Heretic, another project that I'm not sure if I can mention yet, a remake of the Headlocked 6 pager, a CD cover for the Modern Monstrosity guys and a couple of pages for the Approbation guys. And I wanted to cut back on the colouring...sigh... That said, Cher and I are now colouring as a team, so expect to see future colouring jobs by us credited to "Orang Utan."

Speaking of Cher and I working as a team, we recorded our first show for Area 51 at the weekend. It needs a bit of polishing up, but hopefully the Area 51 people will like it and we can get it online soon.

The big news, though, is everything that's happening with Orang Utan, which continues to grow at pace. The official Orang Utan website hasn't been online for two months yet and we've already clocked up 20,000 hits! That's fairly mind blowing. (Oh, and congrats to Cher, whose comic review page on the Area 51 website clocked up over 9000 hits last month).

The first draft scripts for all four issues of the debut Slam Ridley mini series are now complete, and Paul Ridgon is hard at work on the artwork as I type.

Alessio is also hard at work on Young Gods, and I've recently received some great pin-up and cover artwork for Young Gods from Azim Akberali and John Charles (which you can see here).

Eleventh Hour is now, essentially complete. With all internal art both inked and lettered. I just have to prepare all the pages for printing, plus put together the blurb pages. Also, we're still waiting for the cover from Franke.

All in all, the preparations for Bristol are going well. We've just received our banners for the stand, and they look fantastic. Azim's art looks amazing blown up that big. We also have pretty much everything we need for the goodie bags now as well.

So much to do and so little time, but everything seems to be coming together now!